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Monday, November 12, 2012

Finding Strength After Months of Despair and My Brief Flirtation With Hiatus

I found it!
I finally found my strength. I
searched for it high and low. I caught
glimpses here and there. I even danced
with it at times. But those fleeting
moments were actually brief periods of anger masquerading as strength. I thought it was strength because I could
stand in my rage, say and do hurtful things, and make myself believe that
"FUCK YOU!" meant "I don't need you anymore."

Don't get me wrong: I am still angry. There's a fuck load to still feel angry
about. I was cheated on, lied to and made
a fool of… over and over and over again. That kind of anger, though, hits me hard and
fast, and then quickly disappears once fear sets in. Which is probably why I allowed our saga to be
dragged out for far too long. I was desperately
afraid of losing what I thought we once had.

The thing is, I'm generally not a outwardly
angry person. I'm sarcastic to a fault;
I'm snarky, even, but rarely angry. Like
many women (and many more perfectionists), I turn a lot of my anger within; I self-criticize,
self-blame and then, generally, self-destruct.

'What
could I have done better?'

'What
did I do to make her run away?'

'What
makes "The Other" more appealing than me?'

You see?
Self-destructive thinking!

And then a night out with friends, followed
by a chance encounter with more friends (whom I hadn't seen in months) changed everything.
They picked me up and showed me that I
have strength, that I am valuable and that there are wonderful people all
around me, even when I least expect it.
Isn't it crazy? You just never
know who's going to have an impact on you or when until it hits you at that
very moment. Their supportive words
resonated with me for days. And thank
the sweet baby jesus because there isn't enough Grey Goose and American Spirits in the world to get
me through the downward spiral I was heading towards.

What I've finally found is not the "masquerading
anger as strength" strength. Nope. What I think I've finally found is the strength
that comes with clarity. The clarity
that my ex is not the woman I thought she was.
The clarity that my ex did not love me the way she claimed or the way
that I deserved. And the clarity that the
life and love that I thought we had never truly existed. Because it was false. Because she was false. Because it takes two people devoted to one another for a love
like that to be real. And god knows that
I'm no math genius, but even I can add together the sum of us
without a calculator and it sure-as-fuck didn't add up to two. And it was at that moment that I realized:

I
couldn't have done any better. My ex is
the one who needed to be better.

I
didn't run her away. She was too
cowardly to stand and fight for the love she said she had for me.

"The
Other" isn't better than me. What "The
Other" has to offer my ex is the unstable life and questionable character
flaws that she feels most comfortable living with.

So now what? Well, here's what I'm working on:

Living
well is the best revenge. And I will have my revenge by living exceedingly well.

And here's what I realize time and time and
time again:

Nurturing
and fostering real friendships built on trust, honesty, vulnerability and the
occasional cocktail will pay dividends when the shit hits the fan.

Now, getting back to that
"hiatus"… Truth be told, my "hiatus" was due in part because
I was keeping in a lot of these emotions and harboring a lot of secrets. But, as the saying goes, "you're only as
sick as your secrets" and I know that my secrets were keeping me very,
very sick. Well, I'm done with that now.
I don't want to hurt anyone and I really
want to respect the privacy of those around me.
Therefore, I won't get into the gritty and unsavory details which would
utterly destroy my ex and "The Other" (but I'll admit it's very
tempting when I'm feeling rather ragey).

After months of self-destruction, self-pity
and self-blame, I am proud to no longer call myself the safe harbor of shameful
secrets. I'm back to writing on the blog (not that I
took much of a "hiatus" to begin with), provided I have material to
send out into the world wide webs. I'm
working on a new iPhone playlist and am attaching the first song on the
playlist for your enjoyment. And I'm so
pleased that The Nugget is still on board as my contributing author, co-pilot,
one of my best friends and constant source of creativity, inspiration and
amusement (at least as long as she'll have me!). There's room in here for two fabulous girls,
isn't there?